https://moviegique.com/ Moviegique review archive https://moviegique.com/reviews/tokyo-story/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/tokyo-story/ Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:05:00 -0000 That may be another reason I really liked it: Just like Howard Hawks liked a movie when you could tell "Who the Devil made it" I like moves when you can tell "What the Devil country it's from." https://moviegique.com/reviews/obsession/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/obsession/ Sun, 31 May 2026 19:54:00 -0000 She makes Jessica Walter in Play Misty for Me look like a pussycat. https://moviegique.com/reviews/a-blind-bargain/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/a-blind-bargain/ Sat, 23 May 2026 12:39:46 -0000 When you go into a movie called A Blind Bargain starring Crispin Glover and which bills itself as a "reimagining" of a lost 1922 horror movie as a 1970 movie, well, what do you expect? No, seriously, what do you expect? I've seen the movie and I'm still not sure. Poster of the... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-sheep-detectives/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-sheep-detectives/ Sat, 23 May 2026 11:21:48 -0000 I had the most amazing experience recently, and it took several months to occur. A few months ago, I saw a trailer for a movie called The Sheep Detectives. It was buried within the usual plethora of dull, repetitive, off-putting trailers and, at first glance seemed like a... https://moviegique.com/reviews/i-swear/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/i-swear/ Sat, 23 May 2026 10:59:51 -0000 The story of the disrupted award ceremony was funny before I saw the movie I Swear, but after having seen it? It's hilarious. This is a movie about a kid who comes down with Tourette's Syndrome at 13, in 1983. Now, look, Quincy had an episode on Tourette's in 1981, and I... https://moviegique.com/reviews/hokum/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/hokum/ Thu, 21 May 2026 22:40:35 -0000 Damian McCarthy is back! The director of my favorite horror of 2024 (Oddity) gives another masterclass in moody ghost storytelling set in the inherently spooky world of Ireland. As with Oddity, this is about how the supernatural world crosses over with the human world, and the... https://moviegique.com/reviews/lumiere-the-cinema/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/lumiere-the-cinema/ Thu, 21 May 2026 22:19:00 -0000 Rather embarrassingly for a moviegique, I had mistaken Lumière for Méliès, but in either case this was a must-see documentary. Georges Méliès was the special effects pioneer who is most famous for the image of The Man In The Moon with a rocket in his eye. The Lumière brothers... https://moviegique.com/reviews/a-magnificent-life/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/a-magnificent-life/ Thu, 21 May 2026 22:06:52 -0000 The films that we have an opportunity to see are highly curated in a number of ways which I am not going to pretend to fully understand. French films show up, sometimes in clusters, only for the country to vanish for a year or two cinematially speaking. In the past couple of... https://moviegique.com/reviews/over-your-dead-body/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/over-your-dead-body/ Thu, 21 May 2026 19:20:31 -0000 The Boy and I had a blast at this violent Jorma Taccone (MacGruber) black-comedy, but I couldn't help but notice this was the second romantic-dark-comedy in a row, after The Drama. Is Hollywood maybe inching its way back toward the perennial crowd-pleasing romcom genre, but... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-drama/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-drama/ Sat, 02 May 2026 12:28:52 -0000 A24 doesn't just make horror films, but their films are often inflected with horror sensibilities. While The Drama looks like a kind of screwball romantic-comedy, it leans heavily enough into dark comedy to be psychological horror more than rom-com. Charlie (Robert Pattinson)... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-french-connection-1971/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-french-connection-1971/ Fri, 01 May 2026 18:21:07 -0000 When watching five-time Oscar winner, The French Connection, which won for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Editing and Best Writing, one becomes convinced that 1971 must have been a pretty bad year for movies. This feeling plays into my prejudices about the whole... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-lady-from-shanghai-1947/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-lady-from-shanghai-1947/ Fri, 01 May 2026 18:01:53 -0000 Orson Welles wasn't very good at making movies. I mean, sure, his cinematography is breathtaking, his sense of pacing thrilling, his ability to turn any plot into an entertaining story unparalleled. And, sure, he got great performances—often the greatest performances of... https://moviegique.com/reviews/sorcerer-1977/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/sorcerer-1977/ Fri, 01 May 2026 17:35:45 -0000 On the website-formerly-known-as-Twitter the other day, engagement bait was centered around the question "What director had the best three-movie streak?" Among the obvious answers (Lean, Hitch, Nolan, Scorsese) were those who referenced William Friedkin's three-fer: The French... https://moviegique.com/reviews/project-hail-mary/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/project-hail-mary/ Fri, 01 May 2026 17:01:07 -0000 I've been goofing on this film since it came out. I mean, look, it rocketed up the IMDB top 250 ahead of Jaws, Raging Bull, The Big Lebowski and Fargo, Citizen Kane and Rocky—this last film being relevant, as we'll see later. The author is Andy Weir, who gave us the abysmal... https://moviegique.com/reviews/two-prosecutors/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/two-prosecutors/ Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:12:25 -0000 A young, freshly minted lawyer in the USSR in 1937 discovers that dissidents are being tortured by a corrupt NKVD, and seeks to use the ostensible rule of law to right an injustice. Knowing he can't trust the local police, he journeys off to Moscow to file a direct report with... https://moviegique.com/reviews/halloween-3-season-of-the-witch/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/halloween-3-season-of-the-witch/ Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:07:03 -0000 Halloween: 3, Moviegoers: 0 I kid the third entry in the Halloween series. Because it's awful. But as it's one of Darcy The Mail Girl's favorite movies, and she got to program Friday night for The Drive-In Jamboree, we all watched it together with director Tommy Lee Wallace... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-magnificent-ambersons-1942/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-magnificent-ambersons-1942/ Sat, 04 Apr 2026 11:25:00 -0000 Orson Welles' follow-up to Citizen Kane is the touching, tragic tale of an American family that rose to riches and prominence in the 19th century—only to lose it all in the wake of the burgeoning automobile industry. Well, sort of. A funny thing happened on the way to the... https://moviegique.com/reviews/playtime-1967/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/playtime-1967/ Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:49:31 -0000 French auteur Jacques Tati made four films featuring his affably chaotic character, Monsieur Hulot, of which the second and third films are generally regarded as the best. The Boy and I had seen Mon Oncle a few weeks ago and enjoyed it greatly, and so rather enthusiastically... https://moviegique.com/reviews/good-luck-have-fun-dont-die/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/good-luck-have-fun-dont-die/ Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:38:33 -0000 I was talking to a friend (who's been on a David Lean kick) about this movie, and she sighed and said "I hate...today." This isn't so much a reflection on the quality of Gore Verbinski's latest joint Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die so much as its character, and more the... https://moviegique.com/reviews/brief-encounter-1945/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/brief-encounter-1945/ Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:30:44 -0000 David Lean directed Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), and Dr. Zhivago (1965) back-to-back, garnering 19 Oscars out of 34 nominations in those years. (By the current IMDB top 250, only the first two even appear on the list, with Dr. Zhivago apparently... https://moviegique.com/reviews/arco/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/arco/ Mon, 02 Feb 2026 10:33:31 -0000 France's entry into the 2025 Carnal Olympics—I mean, Best Animated Feature Oscar is about the okayist of okay flicks to ever be presented as a child's Saturday AM feature. There were only two youngsters in our showing and one of them left about two-thirds of the way through.... https://moviegique.com/reviews/klaus-2019/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/klaus-2019/ Sat, 17 Jan 2026 16:39:58 -0000 This holiday season has offered a really limited slate of films, for reasons I don't quite understand. It might be that the third Avatar movie was enough to scare off other films, or it might be that having given up on Christmas years ago (the surviving market being relegated... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-whale/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-whale/ Sat, 13 Dec 2025 21:56:23 -0000 I was standing outside the exhibition room door, waiting for The Boy to season his popcorn (caramel & cheesy jalapeno!), reading the poster and pretty happy to be seeing Brendan Fraser in a film again when I saw the following, chilling words: A FILM BY DARREN ARONOFSKY "Darren... https://moviegique.com/reviews/rental-family/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/rental-family/ Sat, 13 Dec 2025 17:17:01 -0000 If he hadn't had his career derailed by a series of mishaps and downright evil, Brendan Fraser would be alongside Tom Hanks in terms of being the modern equivalent of a Golden Age actor like Jimmy Stewart or Henry Fonda. The difference between the two is that I will go see a... https://moviegique.com/reviews/bugonia/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/bugonia/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 14:40:26 -0000 Another day, another Yorgos Lanthimos film. That's a slight exaggeration, though Bugonia is his third film in short order. Poor Things, came late in 2023—so it mostly played in 2024, Kinds of Kindness came later in 2024, and now this film, which retains my general purpose... https://moviegique.com/reviews/if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/if-i-had-legs-id-kick-you/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 14:22:17 -0000 A24 has made a name for itself as a purveyor of odd, artsy and sometimes divisive horror flicks. And while this has created a kind of aura of nonsense around their releases—people are always trying put modifiers on "horror" to separate the kinds they like from the kinds they... https://moviegique.com/reviews/ju-dou-1990/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/ju-dou-1990/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 14:09:37 -0000 Chinese director Zhang Yimou's breakthrough film Raise The Red Lantern (1991) lost the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar to Meditarraneo, but he's been on the American radar ever since, especially with his elevated treatment of chop-socky movies like Hero, House of Flying... https://moviegique.com/reviews/chainsaws-were-singing/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/chainsaws-were-singing/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 13:58:33 -0000 If you see only ONE Estonian horror musical this year, make it Chainsaws Were Singing! How's that for a log line? Well, I guess it's not really a log line because it doesn't tell you what the movie is about. It's more of a blurb. But it's a good one. If I were an Estonian... https://moviegique.com/reviews/joe-bobs-halloween-spooktacular-the-tingler-1959/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/joe-bobs-halloween-spooktacular-the-tingler-1959/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 13:46:32 -0000 In leiu of the traditional "Mutant Meetup" (which took place in Pennsylvania, Memphis, and the last two years in Vegas), Joe Bob and Darcy had a one night "Halloween Spooktacular" at the Texas theater in Dallas from dusk till dawn. The first year in Vegas was the most... https://moviegique.com/reviews/trick-r-treat-2007/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/trick-r-treat-2007/ Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:02:33 -0000 The fall typically brings a spate of horror films as moviegoers seeking safe thrills head to the cineplex in advance of Halloween, which simultaneously expands its reach into the summer while being consumed by Christmas on the other end. While the stores are already full of... https://moviegique.com/reviews/a-house-of-dynamite/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/a-house-of-dynamite/ Wed, 29 Oct 2025 11:54:32 -0000 I just got through reading Dan Brown's Deception Point for the "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" podcast and boy are my arms tired! No, wait, wrong joke. Brown likes short chapters, and he also likes cliffhangers, and over the course of 133 chapters, this can be a little... https://moviegique.com/reviews/dead-of-winter/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/dead-of-winter/ Sun, 12 Oct 2025 15:18:16 -0000 "Emma Thompson is the love child of Marge Gunderson and Rambo" is your high concept take on Dead of Winter, the new thriller from Brian Kirk (best known as a director on "Game Of Thrones" and "Penny Dreadful") working off a script by composer Nicholas Jacob-Larson and actor... https://moviegique.com/reviews/chain-reactions/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/chain-reactions/ Sat, 04 Oct 2025 14:15:29 -0000 Let's talk about people talking about Texas Chainsaw Massacre, fifty-one years old next week. (October 11th, 1974.) This is an odd documentary. I definitely appreciated the approach. If you're in the know about 'saw—to where you know to call it 'saw—you probably know all of... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-long-walk/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-long-walk/ Sat, 04 Oct 2025 14:12:56 -0000 If I said to you The Long Walk is a good film—for boomer fascist fantasy torture porn, would you forget the first part of the sentence by the time you got to the end? I've been thinking a lot these days about what I call "The Buy-In". The Buy-In is the hurdle an artist has to... https://moviegique.com/reviews/weapons/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/weapons/ Tue, 26 Aug 2025 16:46:05 -0000 A funny thing happened on the way to the movie thread. In the last three weeks, we saw five films. All of them were new releases. All but one were good. Two were legitimately great. It got me thinking about how, over recent years, I've seen fewer and fewer of the top 40 films.... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-life-of-chuck/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-life-of-chuck/ Sat, 23 Aug 2025 13:06:12 -0000 The Life of Chuck is a three part story told backwards which, during the first part—actually the last part narratively, gawrdangit I hate it when they do this—created in me a sense of anxiety. Not like Eddington, but more like "Oh, no, what have I done?" You see, the first... https://moviegique.com/reviews/eddington/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/eddington/ Sat, 23 Aug 2025 13:01:54 -0000 My review of any Ari Aster movie is going to be "I liked it, but I can't really recommend it to almost anyone." Hereditary is his most normal of films, being essentially a remake of Rosemary's Baby, with emphasis on moody anxiety and shocking gore. I consider Beau is Afraid to... https://moviegique.com/reviews/return-of-the-living-dead/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/return-of-the-living-dead/ Tue, 22 Jul 2025 13:52:54 -0000 It was another good fortnight-and-a-half at 'casa 'gique, starting with the indie/arty/actorly Everything's Going To Be Great, where a theater kid born into a theater family struggles with convincing people he's heterosexual and ultimately learns he's not the center of the... https://moviegique.com/reviews/mission-impossible-8-the-final-reckoning/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/mission-impossible-8-the-final-reckoning/ Sat, 12 Jul 2025 13:20:49 -0000 We saw a lot of good and interesting movies this past fortnight-and-a-half. Bring Her Back, a melancholy horror from the makers of Talk To The Hand, er Talk To Me, the romantic Lost In Starlight, the 25th anniversary of Dogma (about which I have much to say), the 30th... https://moviegique.com/reviews/lilly/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/lilly/ Wed, 11 Jun 2025 18:47:04 -0000 It's been kind of a slow May around here. We've only seen Ran, Re-Animator and Lilly. I've had a hard time getting into Kurosawa, but I found Ran quite wonderful. Easy to follow despite a rather intricate plot (based on/inspired by "King Lear") and a near three-hour runtime.... https://moviegique.com/reviews/pride-prejudice-2005/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/pride-prejudice-2005/ Sat, 31 May 2025 09:43:56 -0000 It is a truth universally acknowledged, at least by the (self-proclaimed) most die-hard fans of Austen that the '90s British miniseries interpretation of Pride and Prejudice is the best. This truth is so well fixed in the minds of these fanatics that your humble correspondent... https://moviegique.com/reviews/warfare/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/warfare/ Sat, 03 May 2025 12:24:44 -0000 Alex Garland is a talented director. I think. A novelist who transitioned to movies with scripts like 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Dredd, he made a big splash with his directorial debut Ex Machina, which was good, overrated but also easily the peak of his efforts—leading as it... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-ballad-of-wallis-island/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-ballad-of-wallis-island/ Sat, 26 Apr 2025 15:29:07 -0000 A down-and-out former pop star receives an invitation to a remote English island to perform a greatest hits concert from his time as part of an extremely successful folk duo. A simple enough premise, and could describe anything from a comedy to a horror movie. (It resembles,... https://moviegique.com/reviews/when-fall-is-coming/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/when-fall-is-coming/ Sat, 26 Apr 2025 15:15:41 -0000 I know! French, right? I thought I'd get that out of the way up front, since you know it's coming when I review a French film. Let's see if you can guess when I thought that phrase during this sophisticated French mystery/suspense film. Innocent mistake? François Ozon is a... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-rule-of-jenny-pen/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-rule-of-jenny-pen/ Sat, 29 Mar 2025 23:16:44 -0000 If "hag horror" is a thing—and with examples like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and Strait-jacketwho can deny that it is?—might there be a non-distaff version of the genre? That is, if we have genres featuring old women, former starlets, going head to head against each... https://moviegique.com/reviews/presence/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/presence/ Sun, 23 Mar 2025 17:48:04 -0000 Steven Soderbergh. While best known for his breakout film Sex, Lies and Videotape, his award winning films like Erin Brockovich and Traffic, his Ocean's Number-of-people-on-the-Team films, and his flirtation with communist thugs (Che), he's actually made a lot of trash you've... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-big-lebowski-1998-3/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-big-lebowski-1998-3/ Tue, 04 Mar 2025 12:30:21 -0000 Talking with an old friend. He mentions a scene from The Big Lebowski. "That's playing tonight. About 45 minuets." "Really? Where?" "The Nu-Art." "Could we make it?" "Yeah, it takes about twenty-five minutes to get there." And so, dear reader, we found ourselves in Santa... https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-count-of-monte-cristo-2024/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/the-count-of-monte-cristo-2024/ Mon, 17 Feb 2025 13:25:18 -0000 Alexandre Dumas may be the most popular French writer in cinema, with hundreds of credits to his name based on his classic adventure stories like The Three Musketeers, Man in the Iron Mask, The Corsican Brothers and, of course, The Count of Monte Cristo. Improbably interpreted... https://moviegique.com/reviews/blood-simple-1984/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/blood-simple-1984/ Tue, 04 Feb 2025 15:58:12 -0000 The amazing thing about this debut feature from the Coen Brothers, after the fact that it works so well, is how much of their cinematic language was in place from jump: The idiosyncratic dialogue, the low-angle shots, and the primary theme through their work: To wit, that... https://moviegique.com/reviews/end-of-year-movie-roundup/ https://moviegique.com/reviews/end-of-year-movie-roundup/ Sun, 19 Jan 2025 22:39:58 -0000 The end of the year numbers are looking pre-pandemic levels, with over 100 films seen in theaters and drive-ins all over the country! (OK, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Let me have this!) Hopefully 2025 will be even better. Here's a round-up of the past three weeks of movie...